New Evidence Surfaces in Post-Katrina Crimes

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New Evidence Surfaces in Post-Katrina Crimes

by A.C. Thompson

Television news reports are casting new light on the violence that flourished in New Orleans in the anarchic days after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The reports -- broadcast Thursday by WTAE TV in Pittsburgh <1> and WDSU in New Orleans <2> -- focus on two unsolved crimes: the near-fatal shooting of Donnell Herrington, who was allegedly attacked by a group of white vigilantes in the Algiers Point neighborhood, and the murder of Henry Glover, whose charred remains were discovered on a Mississippi River levee. Both victims are African American.

At the center of the news reports is a disturbing and grisly amateur video shot by a pair of private investigators in September 2005 and obtained recently by WTAE journalist Jim Parsons. (Full disclosure: This reporter was interviewed for the WTAE and WDSU stories.)

The private detectives, Mike Orsini and Istvan Balogh, are Pennsylvanians who traveled to New Orleans to volunteer in the wake of the storm. Orsini is a former police officer, while Balogh is an ex-corrections officer. They spent nearly two weeks camped out in Algiers Point, a middle class, largely white enclave nestled on the west bank of the Mississippi River.

On the video, a former Algiers Point resident talks calmly about shooting people. That man, Paul Gleeson claimed that he and his fellow gunmen shot 38 people and said that the victims were looters. Asked if any of the shooting victims died, Gleeson replied, "Who cares? I don't (expletive) know. Who cares? What does it (expletive) matter?"

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http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/07/11-4